Realm of the Damned: Tenebris Deos (Graphic Novel) – review

Author: Alec Worley

Illustrator: Pye Parr

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers:

The Blurb: There's no one left to protect us from what lurks in the dark. There's no Hellboy, no Mulder and Scully, no Torchwood or Men in Black coming to save us. The monsters have won.

Our world now belongs to them.

The Vatican's last line of paranormal defence - The Congregation - has finally been overrun by the supernatural forces of darkness. Our heroes are all dead; only the damned remain. Among them is Alberic Van Helsing - addict, murderer, survivor - and the creatures that were once his prey now hunt him across America. But when an apocalyptic evil is resurrected in the forests of Norway, it falls to Van Helsing to become the hunter once again if mankind and monster alike are to see the dawn.

Van Helsing's quest for salvation and survival takes him through the ruins of a neo-gothic Europe, where he must face the vampire queen of the Vatican, a man-made monster with the heart of a storm, the lycanthropic lord of the forest, the mummified ruler of the slums of Cairo, and the crazed vampire demi-god who threatens to devour them all.

The review: I previously looked at the motion comic of this graphic novel and was a tad disappointed, though I did wonder how well the story would do in comic book form rather than faux-animation.

The graphic was, more or less, exactly the same story wise. I didn’t notice much of anything in this that had been cut from the running length of the motion comic. However Van Helsing’s back story was held back until much later in the story. I don’t intend to run through the story, therefore, as the previous review covers that. Pacing wise this did suit the page rather than the screen and suggests there isn’t a guaranteed medium crossover with regards pacing. Indeed it allowed a slower pace to take in the story and art as needed/desired.

However, the greatest improvement in this was having the character voices supplied by my own mind. The voice-acting in the motion comic was generally poor and the character voices didn’t crossover but, rather, my mind supplied new voices to the characters. In this way the graphic became much more accessible and superior. 6 out of 10.